BAMT - Easy persistent USB key based linux for dedicated miners/mining farms

[sabe]

I tried burning the image to my usb drives (several kinds) which were confirmed to be working with Ubuntu. I used the win32diskimager tool as suggested on the BAMT site.

I am unable to boot from any of them at all though the files show I fine when I check them in Windows.

Any idea what might be going wrong?

If win32diskimager completed the write without errors, you're probably doing everything right.  Some motherboards, especially gigabyte, just have trouble booting from USB.  You may be able to get it working by updating bios to a newer version, that has worked for some people.  Or, it may just not work with your system.  Since I haven't found any systems here that don't work, I'm not able to do much to troubleshoot why some mbs don't work.

Its really strange because when I used the same thumbdrive and motherboards, both Ubuntu & Debian images are booting fine for me.

There is a 4.0b out so I will give that a try after I download it.

[lodcrappo]

I tried burning the image to my usb drives (several kinds) which were confirmed to be working with Ubuntu. I used the win32diskimager tool as suggested on the BAMT site.

I am unable to boot from any of them at all though the files show I fine when I check them in Windows.

Any idea what might be going wrong?

If win32diskimager completed the write without errors, you're probably doing everything right.  Some motherboards, especially gigabyte, just have trouble booting from USB.  You may be able to get it working by updating bios to a newer version, that has worked for some people.  Or, it may just not work with your system.  Since I haven't found any systems here that don't work, I'm not able to do much to troubleshoot why some mbs don't work.

Its really strange because when I used the same thumbdrive and motherboards, both Ubuntu & Debian images are booting fine for me.

There is a 4.0b out so I will give that a try after I download it.

If you mean the refreshed image of bamt, v0.4b.. no it won't help unfortunately.

I know there are some motherboards that won't boot BAMT, but I don't know what the issue is.  It works on all the machines I have available to me, so I can't even reproduce the issue.   As I mentioned, at least one person reported that by flashing the bios on their motherboard to an updated version, bamt started booting.  Another person let me know that they returned a gigabyte motherboard for another brand and the replacement worked fine.  That is really the extent of what is known about this issue.

For now, if it doesn't boot, I'm afraid it just isn't going to work for your system.

[lodcrappo]

"Fix" #12 is out, and it really doesn't fix anything, but it does add a nice new function for those of you running a BAMT farm.



This is the new tool, 'mgpumon'.   mgpumon is passive, it listens on the network for gpu status being broadcast by BAMT nodes.
When it hears status, it displays it.  Simple as that.  To make your bamt nodes broadcast their status, add:

  do_bcast_status: 1

to the settings section of bamt.conf.  They will then start broadcasting every 60 seconds.  That's all there is to configure.

For this first version, it works only on a local IP network, because I like how simple it is.  Might do more with this later.

[bitminers]

Hi, I have one machine that I need to install BAMT 0.4b onto a sata hard drive, has anyone done that or can anyone assist please?

Reason being is this Rig is going a long way and it was delivered with Linux Coin just to find that either Linux Coin had Corrupted or the USB Stick is dodgy, so the guy wants to use a SATA HDD.

I want to use BAMT 0.4B as it is so much better than anything else, I need help Urgently if possible?

Thanks in advance!!

[lodcrappo]

Hi, I have one machine that I need to install BAMT 0.4b onto a sata hard drive, has anyone done that or can anyone assist please?

Reason being is this Rig is going a long way and it was delivered with Linux Coin just to find that either Linux Coin had Corrupted or the USB Stick is dodgy, so the guy wants to use a SATA HDD.

I want to use BAMT 0.4B as it is so much better than anything else, I need help Urgently if possible?

Thanks in advance!!

bamt is designed to run from usb keys, there is no official or guided method for installing to a hard drive.  that's not to say it couldn't be done, but it is going to be a bit of work and I'm not sure anyone has actually done it before.  there was some discussion of possible techniques early in this same thread.

to be honest, I'd use a usb key.  if the one you have is dodgy, pick up a new $5 one at the local office store and save the trouble of trying to do a hdd install.

[bitminers]

Yeah, true USB would be cheapest and easiest however I have to work out a solution, with Linux Coin there was a way of installing it to a Hard Drive, I might go look at that. But if anyone has any idea or has done it please let me know that would be very much appreciated!

One thing with the Stats page IE browsing a Rig from another PC on the network, Im running 4 x 5850's it shows at the TOP of the page all the cards and the stats etc, just with the charts it only shows the first 3 cards the bottom card graphs are like the images are missing? I need to put it on a RIG shortly that has 3 x 6990's in it and it would be good just to have it display all 6 GPU Graphs? See how it goes...

[jh1523]

It can be done but it's complicated and involves some low-level trickery which may depend on your particular situation.

In the meantime if you really want to use a HDD instead of a USB key how about this compromise: use an external USB HDD. BAMT should work off it just as well as from a flash drive. Install steps are exactly the same.

[gnar1ta$]

I added a couple more cards and loaded a fresh copy of .4b and now Xorg runs at 100% cpu, atitweak can't initialize ADL interface, and miners won't start.  Tried disabling cards, and od clocks but nothing changes.  Any ideas?

[bitminers]

It can be done but it's complicated and involves some low-level trickery which may depend on your particular situation.

In the meantime if you really want to use a HDD instead of a USB key how about this compromise: use an external USB HDD. BAMT should work off it just as well as from a flash drive. Install steps are exactly the same.

Hi I tried that, it didn't work. Tomorrow I will try ghosting the thumb drive across to the HDD, there are a few methods with ghost which may work.
If that fails I will go through the lengthy process of installing like with the other dedicated mining OS install to HDD.

I am pretty confident I can get it to work with good old Norton Ghost, it will make a 200GB HDD into a 2GB HDD

I Will report back with how I go!

[zx9r]

Hi, I am using BAMT on a 3x5850 rig and it works pretty well. Good job.

BTW I have some problems with the http monitoring interface. Although it is not a big problem at all I would like to know how can I fixed it. They are two problems:

1. In the main page (http://localhost) it says 0 Mhash/s which obviously is not correct.
2. After clicking on "more info" where I can see the graphs for every card, daily and weekly, it works pretty well for all the graphs but the graph of temperatures for all the GPUs. I mean there is no info at all for the temperature graphs. The other graphs are perfect.

[lodcrappo]

Yeah, true USB would be cheapest and easiest however I have to work out a solution, with Linux Coin there was a way of installing it to a Hard Drive, I might go look at that. But if anyone has any idea or has done it please let me know that would be very much appreciated!

One thing with the Stats page IE browsing a Rig from another PC on the network, Im running 4 x 5850's it shows at the TOP of the page all the cards and the stats etc, just with the charts it only shows the first 3 cards the bottom card graphs are like the images are missing? I need to put it on a RIG shortly that has 3 x 6990's in it and it would be good just to have it display all 6 GPU Graphs? See how it goes...

You should really read/scan this whole thread, nearly every issue you've brought up has already been addressed by others.

[lodcrappo]

Hi, I am using BAMT on a 3x5850 rig and it works pretty well. Good job.

BTW I have some problems with the http monitoring interface. Although it is not a big problem at all I would like to know how can I fixed it. They are two problems:

1. In the main page (http://localhost) it says 0 Mhash/s which obviously is not correct.
2. After clicking on "more info" where I can see the graphs for every card, daily and weekly, it works pretty well for all the graphs but the graph of temperatures for all the GPUs. I mean there is no info at all for the temperature graphs. The other graphs are perfect.

Web interface is not intended to be perfect, it is just an example which you can build on to create your own monitoring system.

It may be more automagical in a future version, but in v0.4 it does require you to set it up for your individual system, if it works at all its because your system isn't too different from mine

[lodcrappo]

I added a couple more cards and loaded a fresh copy of .4b and now Xorg runs at 100% cpu, atitweak can't initialize ADL interface, and miners won't start.  Tried disabling cards, and od clocks but nothing changes.  Any ideas?

Sounds like hardware problem.  You can try this:

In /live/image/syslinux/live.cfg

mess around with appending different boot parameters.  there are many to try, as you can see in the failsafe entry.  certain combination may make your hardware happy.  here is what worked for someone with a sort of similar problem:

append initrd=/live/initrd2.img boot=live config persistent RW vga=normal quiet

[gnar1ta$]

Sounds like hardware problem.  You can try this:

Yes, that would be extenders.  Is there some trick to getting extenders to work?  Even putting one card on an extender causes chaos.

[lodcrappo]

Sounds like hardware problem.  You can try this:

Yes, that would be extenders.  Is there some trick to getting extenders to work?  Even putting one card on an extender causes chaos.

hmm others may know better than I.. i do use extenders on several rigs but only one per, most gpus i use is 3 with 2 on the mb and one on extender.  never had to do anything special to make them work here.

[lodcrappo]

I made a channel on freenode, I'll try to monitor it.  Maybe bamt folks can use it to assist each other etc.

BAMT chat -
#bamt on freenode, or click for web thing

[jayfitt]

My hats off to you lodcrappo!

Very easy install and configuration. On the first boot I edited the config and pools, then rebooted to test persistence. The wife distracted me for a bit and when I came back my miners were already working at BTCGuild!

[bitminers]

You can run BAMT of any Hard Drive or SSD Drive, you cannot use the normal tool you use to write the file to a USB key.

Easiest and Fastest Procedure: - 10 Minutes Maximum Time!

1) Create a USB bootable version of BAMT as per instructions
2) Get a copy of Norton Ghost ( The DOS Bootable Version ) Boot this from CD or Floppy
3) In Norton Ghost settings set Image All** that is a MUST, that copies boot sector and everything.
4) Choose disk to disk copy, this then ghost's to any size drive, IDE, SATA what ever and your ready to go!

Takes about 10 Minutes Maximum, sorry for such a brief explanation but anyone who has used Norton's Ghost etc will know exactly what I am talking about, so it runs great on Hard Drive if you want to run it on a HDD instead of a USB Drive.

If anyone needs help I am happy to assist, it is very easy. The only reason I Needed to get BAMT working on HDD's is a customer preferred to run BAMT from a HDD, mine are running fine of USB Thumb Drives.

Any other Imaging software should work as long as it copies the bootsector and full sector by sector copy. I just use the OLD fashioned ghost because it is reliable.

[lodcrappo]

You can run BAMT of any Hard Drive or SSD Drive, you cannot use the normal tool you use to write the file to a USB key.

Easiest and Fastest Procedure: - 10 Minutes Maximum Time!

1) Create a USB bootable version of BAMT as per instructions
2) Get a copy of Norton Ghost ( The DOS Bootable Version ) Boot this from CD or Floppy
3) In Norton Ghost settings set Image All** that is a MUST, that copies boot sector and everything.
4) Choose disk to disk copy, this then ghost's to any size drive, IDE, SATA what ever and your ready to go!

Takes about 10 Minutes Maximum, sorry for such a brief explanation but anyone who has used Norton's Ghost etc will know exactly what I am talking about, so it runs great on Hard Drive if you want to run it on a HDD instead of a USB Drive.

If anyone needs help I am happy to assist, it is very easy. The only reason I Needed to get BAMT working on HDD's is a customer preferred to run BAMT from a HDD, mine are running fine of USB Thumb Drives.

Any other Imaging software should work as long as it copies the bootsector and full sector by sector copy. I just use the OLD fashioned ghost because it is reliable.

Nice.  Well done and thanks for sharing.  I'll add this info to the FAQ

[lodcrappo]

Fix #13 is available:

Additional functionality for mgpumon.  More data displayed, or use # keys to
switch between info.

Also, can send routed/direct status updates in addition to or rather than broadcast,
allowing monitoring from remote networks.  For directed status, you can specify:

   do_direct_status: 1.2.3.4

in bamt.conf settings section, with the IP of the machine running mgpumon.